Creative Commons (CC) : A New
Model for Copyright Management
Professor Brian Fitzgerald
Head of School of Law QUT
CRICOS No. 000213J
Queensland University of Technology
CC: Key Themes
• Sharing, Accessing, Collaborating and Negotiating: Content,
Knowledge, Culture and Production – “with a minimum of fuss”
• Fueled by the negotiability, innovation and creative potential of
the digital environment – “cut and paste”, “remix” “P2P”
• Free Culture – Free to Access – a repository of open space or
commons unencumbered by large transaction costs and
threats of law suits - Lessig, The Future of Ideas (2001); Free
Culture (2004)
• Creative Innovation – core economic driver – Florida, Rise of
the Creative Class (2002) – CC slogan “get creative”
• Peer to Peer Production and User Led Innovation - Y Benkler,
“Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm”, (2002)
112 Yale Law Journal 369 – Collaborative Innovation
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Implementing CC
• Locate/build and inform people of creative
resources
• Establish easy to implement generic non
discriminatory protocols for access to and
reutilising or reusing of content – a process
of “licensing out”
• Make it easier to negotiate out or access
copyright material
• Builds on free software model
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Free and Open Source Software
• “The powerful insight that Richard Stallman and his advisers at
the Free Software Foundation .. discovered was that if you want
to structure open access to knowledge you must leverage off
or use as a platform your intellectual property rights. The
genius of Stallman was in understanding and implementing the
ethic that if you want to create a community of information or
creative commons you need to be able to control the way the
information is used once it leaves your hands. The regulation
of this downstream activity was achieved by claiming an
intellectual property right (copyright in the code) at the source
and then structuring its downstream usage through a licence
(GNU GPL). This was not a simple “giving away” of information
but rather a strategic mechanism for ensuring the information
stayed “free” as in speech. It is on this foundation that we now
see initiatives like the Creative Commons expanding that idea
from open source code to open digital content.”: A Fitzgerald
and B Fitzgerald Intellectual Property in Principle (2004) at
[11.100].
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Negotiating and Managing IPRS for Open
Access – CreativeCommons.org
• CreativeCommons.org – not for profit corp.
based in SFO
• Provides licences for allowing people to
reutilise content on certain conditions
• Licence Language - Common, Legal and
Code – easy to use and understand
• To implement - create a link to the CC licence
or insert conditions of reuse in your code or
metadata
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Four main protocols
• Attribution: Other people may use, modify and distribute the work,
as long as they give the original author credit.
• Non-commercial: Other people may use, modify and distribute the
work, but for non-commercial purposes only.
• No derivatives: Other people may use and distribute the work, but
can not modify it to create derivative works.
• Share alike: Other people may modify the work and distribute
derivatives, but only on the condition that the derivatives are made
available to other people on the same licence terms. This term can
not be used with the No Derivatives term, because it applies only to
derivative works.
• Need to mention Moral Rights (asserted) in Australian licence
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
International Creative Commons
iCommons
• Christiane Asschenfeldt – iCommons
Coordinator
• QUT – Institutional Affiliate in Australia
Translating licences and philosophy of
creative commons into each national
jurisdiction – porting – to assist
enforceability Differences - Australian to US
law: copyright terminology, TPA, moral rights
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
CC Badge
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Sampling Licences
• There are three different versions of the Sampling licence
available:
– The Sampling Licence. This licence allows users to use part of the
licensed material for any purpose other than advertising, but does not
allow users to perform, display or distribute copies of the whole of the
licensed material for any purpose.
– The Sampling Plus Licence. This licence allows users to use part of
the licensed material for any purpose other than advertising. It also
allows users to perform, display and distribute copies of the whole of
the licensed material for non-commercial purposes.
– The Noncommercial Sampling Plus Licence. This licence allows
users to use the whole or a part of the licensed material for noncommercial purposes.
– The Music Sharing licence. This licence was developed for
musicians who want to spread their music on the web and filesharing
networks legally for fans to download and share, while protecting the
music from commercial use or remixing of any kind.
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Wired Magazine
• Wired magazine has produced a compact disc where
the work of artists and bands are distributed under
Creative Commons licences. The Wired CD was
released together with the November 2004 of Wired
Magazine.Sixteen recording artists agreed to
participate in this project and contribute their work
for inclusion on the Wired CD.
• There are two different licences under which tracks
on the Wired CD are distributed. Thirteen recording
artists chose to distribute their work under the
Sampling Plus Licence. Three recording artists
chose to distribute their work under the
Noncommercial Sampling Plus Licence.
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Existing Projects
• Public Library of Science – www.plos.org – uses CC
• AEShareNet – AESL a corporation funded in part by
Commonwealth and State Governments
• Australian Creative Resource Archive (ACRA) – UQ Ipswich
www.acro.edu.au
• BBC Creative Archive http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/
• Creative Commons Search Engine –
search.creativecommons.org
• CommonContent.org Website
• Over 53 million objects – linked to CC licences
• Australian users: LAMS Community www.lamscommunity.org
OnlineOpinion.com.au Vibewire.net.au
Creativecommons.org.au
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Application to Government
•
•
•
•
State/Government Ownership of Copyright
CLRC Report – www.clrc.gov.au
Open Content Licensing possibilities
EU Directive on Reuse of and OECD Work on
Public Sector Information (PSI) Management
• UK Common Information Environment (CIE)
– CC in the UK Public Sector
www.intrallect.com/cie-study/
Report%20for%20CIE%20-19th%20July.pdf
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Relationship to Copyright
• Not anti-copyright
• Relies on and is complementary to copyright
• Aims to make copyright more alive active
and accessible
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Motivation for Sharing
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ideologically and financially this may be acceptable – the most
compelling example in Australia is government where information is
ultimately owned by and for the people
Open contenting one version of your material e.g. a draft (E Print) or
a chapter may in fact be a strategy for enhancing the
commercialised version of your content
A wish to share with others for creative and educational purposes –
peer production
Publicity – what the free and open software movement calls
“egoboo” or reputation within the open community which in some
cases will be exploited commercially down the track
Negotiability – through technologically implemented generic
protocols that can be utilised with the click of a mouse
“What is junk to one may be gold to another” – the idea that the off
cuts or digital junk of one person may be the building blocks of
knowledge and creative genius for another
“indirect appropriation” – money, design and use of end product,
pleasure or social profile gained through involvement in peer
production - Benkler
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
The Dynamic of Distributed Knowledge
• The dynamic of serendipitous creation, research
and innovation – allowing unknown parts and
paths to be joined together through the dynamic
nature of a distributed web
• Collaboration the new innovation
• Important to teachers and students
• Libr@ries will need to understand these
developments
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Open Access
• The Open Access (OA) Movement is intimately connected with the
Creative Commons movement and particularly the Science
Commons project <sciencecommons.org>. Open Access as defined
in the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the
Sciences and Humanities (2003)
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html and
the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003)
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm seeks to open up
access to research, data sets and scholarship especially that which
is publicly funded. Creative Commons licences are seen as a
mechanism through which open access to research can be
promoted: R Poynder, “The Role of DRM in Open Access” (2005)
www.indicare.org
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Teaching and Learning
•
•
•
•
A recent high-level report from the Australian Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher
Education authored by Deborah Southwell et al entitled Strategies for effective dissemination of
project outcomes (2005) the following comments are made:
In recent months potential answers to some of these questions have developed in the form of a
wider understanding about new forms of licensing which involve the sharing of rights rather than
holding an exclusive monopoly of rights. Perhaps the best known of these forms internationally is
the Creative Commons licence, of which an Australian version has been in existence since
January 2005. Under Creative Commons licenses, it is possible for creators of intellectual
property to provide conditions in which others may use copy and modify their work, providing that
the results of this are fully attributed, and that the uses to which the intellectual property is put are
not commercially exploited unless this is specifically agreed. Creative Commons licensing offers
the possibility of accelerating the dissemination of innovation because it reduces confusion or
uncertainty in terms of the disposition of IP that might be created, particularly in circumstances
where the development of content is as a result of public investment of one form or another.
The development of this form of licensing comes at a time when at a policy level the
Commonwealth is also concerned to see that the results of publicly funded research are available
in a more open and generally accessible way than they have been to date, particularly where
research outputs are the subject of monopoly approaches to the assignment of copyright in
publishing.
A generally applicable guideline in the dissemination of teaching innovations should be that a
Creative Commons licensing approach should be the de facto approach to assist dissemination.
(pp24-25)
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
DEST SII “Legal Protocols” Project
• This Project starting immediately and running
through to the middle of 2007 will consider
management of copyright for open access in
research repositories
• QUT is the lead institution – I am project leader
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
QUT Led ARC Centre of Excellence in
Creative Industries and Innovation
•
•
•
•
Considers Creative Innovation
Including Creative Workforce
I am Project Leader of Law
Creative Innovation Clinic – across Law,
Education, Business, IT and Creative Industries
• Creative Commons Research
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
CC Remix School Based Showcase
• Could we have school students work with CC
material to create product for a national
showcase – presented through a website?
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J
Concl
a university for the
real world
R
CRICOS No. 000213J